Rick Perry: Global Warming Not Proven

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas and 2012 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, says man-made climate change has not been proven.
REUTERS/Jim Young

Republican presidential candidate for 2012 Gov. Rick Perry is not being coy about his stance on global warming/climate change -- he views it as a scientific theory that has not been proved.

Perry Wednesday was asked about a passage in his book Fed Up!in which he wrote that ''doctored data'' was behind the science on global warming and accused former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, D-Tenn., who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his call to action on climate change, of being a ''false prophet of a secular carbon cult, smh.com reported Thursday.

''They know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time,'' Perry wrote.

Sees A Politicized Issue

Perry added on the campaign stump that the entire issue, in his interpretation, has been caught in the liberal vs. conservative ideological dispute currently playing out in Washington between the nation's two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. In other words, Perry is saying that he's not convinced objective scientific research is being done on the issue.

I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects, Perry said, The Washington Post reported. I think we're seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They've been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.

Political/Public Policy Analysis: With all due respect, Perry's stance is lamentable and his analysis tenuous, if not absurd.

A 2010 study by the National Academy of Science that surveyed 1,372 climate researchers indicated that 98 percent believed in the concept of man-made climate change.

Further, the concept that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could create a greenhouse effect was establish in 1896.

What's more, there's almost universal agreement that human activity is warming the climate. The United States Global Change Research Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree, and the consensus on climate change can be found by clicking here.

Perry's comments are not constructive: they give Americans and others the impression that nothing needs to be done to reduce fossil fuel-based greenhouse gases and that is most certainly not the case. Absent measures to reduce them, the climate will continue to get warmer.